


Between August and September

by misura



Category: NCIS
Genre: Age Difference, Community: ncis_ficathon, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-27
Updated: 2011-08-27
Packaged: 2017-10-23 06:03:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/247024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>prompt(s): <i>Abby/Gibbs - It wasn't like they sat down and agreed to start a relationship. Rather, it was more like it just happened, and they were in the middle of it before they realized. [Or they don't even realize it. That works too.]</i> with post-season 2 <i>Gibbs/Kate - There was something about this man, something that the CIA director [her boss] didn't have--something that not even the president she guarded had. Something that made her realize that one day she would put down her life for this man, and do it willingly.</i> presented in a shape somewhat alike to <i>Team!fic - Epic bromance all around. Witty banter, much snark, and shenanigans. Preferably taking place on the job [in the bullpen, mortuary, lab, etc].</i></p>
    </blockquote>





	Between August and September

**Author's Note:**

> prompt(s): _Abby/Gibbs - It wasn't like they sat down and agreed to start a relationship. Rather, it was more like it just happened, and they were in the middle of it before they realized. [Or they don't even realize it. That works too.]_ with post-season 2 _Gibbs/Kate - There was something about this man, something that the CIA director [her boss] didn't have--something that not even the president she guarded had. Something that made her realize that one day she would put down her life for this man, and do it willingly._ presented in a shape somewhat alike to _Team!fic - Epic bromance all around. Witty banter, much snark, and shenanigans. Preferably taking place on the job [in the bullpen, mortuary, lab, etc]._

There are three things Gibbs dislikes about dead people and the second one is that they seem able to read his mind with an ease that is, frankly, a little unsettling.

“She could have been your daughter, Gibbs.”

The part where they perch on his desk without messing up his paperwork, he can handle. Gibbs can't say he enjoys the way Kate being dead has left her able to sneak up on him without so much as a peep, but it's bearable. After all, she's dead. Figures she'd get _something_ out of it, even if it doesn't seem like much.

“Naw,” he says.

“Aye,” Kate says. “Or should that be 'yea'?”

Gibbs tries to take a sip of coffee, finds there's none left in his cup. It's one of those nights, really.

“If she's anything like her mother, I'd have remembered her. Then I actually might have got four ex-wives, instead of three.” He barely manages to swallow the 'just'. _Just_ three ex-wives. Most men leave it at one. They probably think they've gotten smart, wisened up about women. Fools.

“You know I didn't mean it _literally_ ,” Kate says.

“I need a refill,” Gibbs says, holding up his empty cup. It's only his fifth one of the evening. Ducky should be pleased.

The third thing Gibbs dislikes about dead people is that they always make him get his own coffee.

 

McGee knows before DiNozzo, because McGee has got a touch of that rarest of abilities: he can think with his guts, while DiNozzo's still stuck in the stage where he thinks that just because he's got something women don't, that means he should use it by way of a brain. (It doesn't make him a bad agent. It just makes him DiNozzo.)

“You think Abby and Gibbs are - you know?”

It's the day after the night before, and Gibbs is on his second cup of coffee of the morning, if you define 'morning' as 'the time after perhaps one hour of closing one's eyes, lying back, and trying not to think of one's country and what might happen if one is caught napping while important news comes in'.

If McGee had been smarter, he'd have figured out by now that in this office, to name Gibbs is to summon him. If McGee had been more confident, he'd have accepted what his guts were telling him, instead of trying to get confirmation from DiNozzo. After two years, Gibbs comes close to, if not despair, then at least exasperation sometimes.

“Are what, probie?” DiNozzo, predictably, acts dumb. It's a talent like any other, and if Gibbs chooses to act along on occasion - well, not _his_ place to blow a guy's cover, is it?

“You know.” McGee makes an extremely vague gesture. Gibbs doesn't actually see the thing itself from where he's standing, but he can see DiNozzo's expression. It's enough.

Persistent is not a bad thing to be, except when it substitutes for 'should know better by now'.

“Knitting? Baking cookies? Surfing the Internet? Having hot, steamy sex you wish _you_ were having?”

McGee's shoulders tense. “So you did know.” Jumping to conclusions - something that _does_ make someone a bad agent, as a rule, even if in this particular case, the jumped to conlusion may have been right. DiNozzo's got eyes and ears like any person, after all; stands to reason he knows how to use them.

“Jealous?” DiNozzo asks, and Gibbs hopes, really he does, that McGee is aware that he's being maneuvered, sidetracked, distracted from the fact that his question hasn't really been answered at all. He's not completely sure, though.

“No,” McGee says, too defensively and too quickly. “Of course not,” he adds after a moment, slightly more convincingly.

“You should be,” DiNozzo says, exactly smug and gleeful enough to reduce the whole thing to a teasing matter - one more thing to needle McGee with over the course of their workday. Not diplomacy, possibly, but still not badly done. “Oh, hey. Morning, boss.”

McGee turns, looking slightly worried. It's an expression that'll probably get etched on his face one of these days. “DiNozzo. McGee.”

 

“Kate seems to think I'm too old for her.”

The autopsy room is the one place where Gibbs knows she won't come sneaking up on him. He's not sure why, unless it's got to do with the dead bodies. They never particularly bothered her when she was alive, but it's possible being dead has changed that.

“Kate ... Caitlin?” Ducky's too old to bother with 'worried'. 'Slightly concerned', maybe.

“I see dead people,” Gibbs says. It's a line from ... somewhere. A quote and thus, a joke. Abby'd probably know wherefrom.

“How very ... Bruce Willis of you.” As does Ducky, apparently.

It's almost enough to make Gibbs think that perhaps he _should_ get out more after all. “Who?”

“Oh, no, you're right.” Ducky smiles. “Old age, the convenient eternal excuse for those given to forgetfulness. Well-caught.”

Gibbs sips his coffee.

“Love, like beauty, knows neither age nor gender. Nor any lick of sense, but _that_ , presumably, is why we all keep falling for it.”

Ducky dates. He'll tell Gibbs about the dinner, sometimes the movie, occasionally the dress. He's old-fashioned in a way they're both comfortable with.

“You _are_ old enough to be her father.”

Gibbs considers. “You talk to dead people too much.” It's not an easy thing to forget he's not the only one still remembering Kate, but sometimes, he still needs a reminder. Old wounds, like old age.

“Inevitable in my line of work, I'm afraid. However,” Ducky continues, his tone entirely too close to the one he uses to lecture Palmer, “they have yet to return the favor. Strange, don't you think? A matter of the soul and the body, perhaps?”

“Ask me again when we're both drunk,” Gibbs says, rising - there'll be a report waiting for him on his desk by now. Or should be, at any rate, and if not, well, then that's something to do, too.

“That would be 'never', I assume.”

 

Add together Abby, a fresh Caf-Pow! and that damn question that slips out because Gibbs has gotten into the bad habit of listening when dead people are talking to him. (It feels like a courtesy, the least he can still do for her.)

“You think I'm too young for you,” Abby says. “Gibbs, that's just so - wait, I'm not sure yet whether to go with 'really, really sweet' or 'really, really dumb'.”

“The evidence?” Gibbs asks, because the other thing seems pretty much settled and because crimes don't solve themselves.


End file.
